RAIDs, SSDs, iCLOUD and Performance

Larry's Blog by Larry Jordan

A question I am getting more and more these days revolves around something Jerry Thompson asks:

While I am interested in performance and speed between [Thunderbolt and USB 3], I find I am not completely understanding all I need to regarding RAID technology.

Or, as Craig McKenna writes:

[I recently bought] a 120 GB external SSD with Thunderbolt, I’m wondering how you would go about organizing my media.

I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing specific storage products. In this article, I want to take a step back and discuss storage performance in general.

RAID

A RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives) is a collection of hard drives that create a pool of storage this is both very large and very fast. To the computer, and on your desktop, it looks like a single very big, very fast hard drive. A RAID builds all the drives into a single box with a single connection to the computer. (Yes, you can custom-build a RAID using stand-alone disks, but let’s just keep this simple.)

RAIDs are categorized into “levels,” which describe a combination of speed, redundancy, and price. read more...